Trump Chimed in on Twitter in the Wake of His Former Assistant's Reported Leaks About the First Family

Gabrielle Bruney

From Esquire

President Donald Trump tweeted Saturday morning about the departure of his former personal assistant Madeleine Westerhout, after confirming Friday that the aide had left her job after talking to reporters about the Trump family.

"While Madeleine Westerhout has a fully enforceable confidentiality agreement, she is a very good person and I don’t think there would ever be reason to use it," wrote the president. "She called me yesterday to apologize, had a bad night. I fully understood and forgave her!"

The tweet came in the wake of Westerhout's sudden departure from her post in the wake of reports that she discussed the president’s family over an off-the-record dinner with journalists earlier this month. According to Politico, Westerhout bragged "that she had a better relationship with Trump than his own daughters," that "the president did not like being in pictures with Tiffany because he perceived her as overweight," and joked that "Trump couldn’t pick Tiffany out of a crowd."

It’s not the first time Trump has been accused of saying less-than-fatherly things about his children. In his remarks to Congress, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen said that the president had declared that his son, Donald Jr., "had the worst judgement of anyone in the world." And the president is on record making deeply inappropriate remarks about Ivanka on multiple occasions, including saying that "she’s got the best body," and that if she "weren’t [his] daughter, perhaps [he’d] be dating her." In 2016, then-candidate Trump said that while he was "very proud" of elder children Eric, Ivanka, and Don Jr., he was proud of Tiffany "to a lesser extent."

While the president has savaged departing staffers in the past, he has been gentler in his remarks about Westerhout, with whom he reportedly had a close relationship. "I really think she had a bad night," Trump told press on the White House lawn Friday of his former assistant. "You don’t say things like she said, which were just a little bit hurtful to some people. She mentioned a couple of things about my children… It’s too bad. I wished her well."

On Twitter Saturday, Trump implicitly responded to Westerhout’s reported claims about his relationship with his younger daughter by ending his tweet about the former aide with, "I love Tiffany, doing great!"

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